Let Me Save Her
by gracethescribbler
Summary: Reylo Tangled AU where Ben saves Rey from Palpatine, Rey saves the world, and Ben's family saves Rey again. Exactly what it says on the tin. I was really emotional after TROS so I had to make this.


Let Me Save Her

The tower was wreathed in lightning storms and heavy clouds by the time Ben arrived at the foot of it, jumping off his horse without bothering to try to tie the animal up. Winds ripped at his hair and face as he pressed his palms against the stone wall, the lightning around him intensifying, seemingly sourceless as the thunder cracked horribly in his ears. He stared up through the slashing rain, barely able to see, at the window of the only home Rey had ever known. She was still there, he could feel her, so he gripped the rough stone and drew on the magic deep in his bones and started to climb.

The wind dragged him away from the wall and slammed him back into it by turns, the water in his eyes making him blind to all but the stone right in front of him, his fingers and boots scraping against the masonry, clothes clinging to his skin and offering precious little protection against the storm. He thought he heard voices on the wind, shrieking and howling, and although they should have dissuaded him he just pushed himself harder. He had to get to Rey. He had to.

He felt blinded and wrung out by the time he got to the window, managed to claw one hand over the sill and hang on. His skin felt on fire, crackling, but he took a deep breath in and pushed himself over the sill, out of the worst of the wind, and into almost too much quiet.

The tower was dark, the living room where he'd first met Rey shadowed and grey. He put his hand on his sword, settled into half a crouch, eyes darting through the room. It took him too long to adjust to the black room, only intermittently lit by white lightning, but he moved forward carefully toward where he knew Rey had to be.

"Here you are at last. Ben Solo."

The voice echoed through the room, off the walls, and Ben drew his sword, the rasp of metal loud against the storm outside. Where was Rey? He didn't see her. He didn't see Palpatine, either.

Then the lightning lit up the tower again, sheer white, and he saw a crumpled form on the floor - Rey. And behind her, the heavy black robes of the wizard, who no longer looked as decayed as he had before, whose eyes almost glowed yellow in the shadows. The next moment the glimpse was gone, but Ben straightened and pointed his sword at the dark, fear and anger twisted up with protectiveness in his chest. "Let her go," he said, low. "She's not yours."

A laugh came stilted and raspy out of the dark, less echoing. "Her power was always meant to be mine. If you walk away now, I have promised to spare you. You can do nothing for her." The lightning sparked again, illuminating a ghastly smile and- a hint of breath, the rise and fall of Rey's shoulder. She was alive. Barely, maybe, but alive. Ben swallowed.

"Counter offer," he said, remembering how Han used to argue with people, when he was a kid, projecting confidence he may never have really had. "Let me save her, and you can have me." It was a gamble. A terrible idea, in the hopes that Palpatine would take the chance to destroy the remnants of the Skywalker line, the last mage in the old ruling family, and risk letting Rey live to defy him. Ben tightened his grip on his sword, grit his teeth. "Let her leave, and I'll go with you." Better him than her - she was the one everyone needed, the one who could make the kingdom happy, who made everyone who met her smile. Even if he was gone and the odds were stacked against her, he thought she would be able to make everything alright.

That was who she was.

The wind grew quieter, for a moment, and Ben's eyes, adjusting to the dark, caught movement in the shadows, making him tense. Then the wizard spoke, triumph seeping into his voice. "Very well, Ben Solo. Have your way."

The storm outside grew quieter still, and although it did not grow much lighter in the tower, it still was light enough that Ben could sheath his sword and rush over to where he now saw Rey curled on the floor. Drained, he thought, not injured. Likely she was alive now only because she had some magic left - what little Palpatine had not used up.

His own magic, which had felt dimmed and confused in the onslaught of the storm, hummed quietly in his hands as he pulled Rey into his arms, against his chest. He could heal her, he would. "Rey," he whispered, and settled his hand on her chest, steadying.

Her eyes opened, just a little, and she recognized him, a slight smile breaking over her features. "Ben," she said, sighing. Then, more sharp, "Ben." And she pushed his hand away, fingers curling around his wrist.

"It's okay," he said. "Let me heal you, it's going to be okay."

Rey's eyes darted to the shadow that was Palpatine, and she shook her head wordlessly and pushed away from him, determination hardening her features. Ben didn't understand. "This is what he wants," she breathed, hardly above a whisper. "You can't."

"It's okay," Ben repeated, although all in a moment he understood what she meant - that Palpatine had expected this, and didn't care if Rey lived for now and escaped if the Skywalkers were no more. Rey, whose magic had kept him alive for all these years in this tower. "It's okay," he repeated, fiercely. He wouldn't let her die.

When he reached out to touch her again, he saw her resolve before he understood what she was doing, and suddenly she swept her hand towards him, and the magic she needed to keep her alive, the last light glimmers of her power, flung him away from her so hard that he crashed into the wall by the window. Aching, coughing, he felt the magic in the room seep away into nothing, and with it went his sense of Rey's presence, so that everything was only cold and dark.

"No," he breathed.

"No," snarled Palpatine, in a voice that sounded broken and snarled, distorted. Ben looked up at him from the floor, at the yellow-eyed face and the aged skin, and realized that those things were changing. Where the hands had been grasping, reaching, the fingers shriveled and seemed to decay before his eyes, where the eyes had been glowing they began to turn white and ghastly, and the wizard let out a horrible scream as he seemed to rot from the inside, and he stumbled towards Ben in some aborted movement for revenge. Stumbled toward the window.

Ben knew it was not his imagination when, as the rotting fingers reached for him, he saw another figure behind Palpatine, blue and ghostly, reach out too. Magic and light rushed against Ben's face, and Palpatine screamed again with the sound of cracking masonry as he was flung against the windowsill and toppled over into the storm.

The figure, who Ben did not recognize, long-haired and scarred and looking- Well, if it was possible for one of his ancestors to look smug, Ben thought, this one did- The figure nodded to him and faded away.

In the same moment, everything went very still and, slowly, a beam of sun broke through the window, golden and almost too bright, lighting up the tower room in all its disarray and Rey's white, small body.

Ben scrambled to his feet and ran back to her, again fit his arms under her and pulled her onto his lap, curling his hand over her cheek. She stared sightlessly at him, face fixed in that determined frown he ought to have been glad to see. But she was gone, after everything, and he knew it had been her choice, but she had been- he had wanted to protect her, had dreamed of staying with her, and then had hoped only to let her live and be free. Now it was only him, despite all of it, and he should have been glad that they won. But he wasn't.

"Please, Rey," he said, quietly, to nothing, and leaned down to press his forehead against hers. Magic could not fix this, he had learned that since he was a child. There are limits, his mother had taught him. He tried anyway, tried to heal where there was no physical hurt, only a loss of what had been. "Please."

He thought it was him, at first, the warmth that brushed like a breeze over his skin, through his hair, between he and Rey. Warmth accompanied by golden spirals of light, bright against the shadows, sparking over Rey's face. Then he felt hands on his shoulders, sensed familiar spirits gathering around him. The ancestors, who had so often refused to appear to him, settling around him and Rey, and he lifted his head. There was his father, and his mother, and his uncle and the man who had appeared before, and others he didn't recognize and didn't believe were part of his family but who were looking at him and Rey with a steady kind of compassion.

His mother's hand, cool but there, came to rest on his over Rey's cheek, and he heard the whisper of her voice, as if from a distance. "We are giving her back," she said, and the others nodded. "What once was hers, we return," someone else said, and the golden light spilled over Ben's hands, across Rey's skin, and leapt into the air like the winter lights, weaving between the two of them and through the room, making the ancestors' forms appear insubstantial and faint. Where the light touched Rey's skin, it seemed to soak into her and fade, and slowly the ancestors and the golden light faded, until all that remained was a flush in Rey's cheeks, a soft smell of sun and wind in the room.

Ben didn't move, couldn't, leaving his hand on her cheek, until he felt her chest rise, saw her lips open in a sharp inhale, and then her eyes opened, too.

"Rey," he whispered, and her smile now was as bright as the sun streaming in the window, and she answered him again.

"Ben."

He tugged her so close against his chest he could feel her heart beating, wrapped his arms around her shoulders and buried his face in her neck. She was hugging him back with strong arms, and he felt her laughing. Felt the presence of her, magic and life.

Then she sat back from him, her smile wide, and leaned in to kiss him, and he couldn't help but laugh too, against her mouth. He tangled his fingers in her hair and drank in the feel of her hands on his cheeks, her lips against his, the way her eyes sparkled.

Alive.

"You're back," he said, breathlessly, when she pulled away again. He thought he might never let go of her.

"I want to go home," she told him, grinning and looking past him out the window. "I'm ready."

So Ben stood, helping her to her feet, and hand in hand they left the tower that had kept her trapped for so long, to the world that swept them both away with its warmth and life.

* * *

**A/N: This is really just the Reylo Tangled AU I've been contemplating ever since I saw that healing scene in TROS and thought "this is Tangled, isn't it." Complete with a way happier ending because as much as I loved that movie I needed to fix this immediately. I have done no editing, I just really wanted to get this written and posted.**

**Title is from the gorgeous song from the Tangled score when Flynn and Rapunzel save each other called "Let Me Save Him/The Tear Heals."**

**(I did really enjoy TROS so I'd appreciate positivity - if anyone wants to come chat about Reylo you can come catch me on my Tumblr - collegefangirl3791.)**


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